Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for October 20, 2017

I can’t worry about both? Just watch me.

Vice versa, if you have no money, you can’t add to global warming.

I’m with Goat on this one. How comforting.

We’re still burning peat. We’re just waiting to see if this new-fangled thing called coal catches on…

Does this explain fossil fuel company CEOs?

Well, my father, a very relaxed fellow, always told me “Son, worry is the price you pay for what doesn’t happen!” He never got to the 1st corollary, however, which is: therefore worry.

Coal flavored food? Yummy!

Meanwhile, China is going solar.

Why worry about what nature does? Nature will do what it does. Humans don’t affect it much.

…Rat: MAGA!

My son was worried about both homework and the sun one day dying. I told him by the time the sun dies we’ll be long gone (a billion years or so) but that homework is due tomorrow so not to hedge his bets on the sun dying before school the next day.

I suppose I am a wet blanket in pointing out two logical fallacies with Rat’s theorem, first it is not one worry cancelling out the other worry – for his statement to be true the actuality of global warming would have to be true, in order for it to end life and therefore financial worry, not the fear of it (you could be unperturbed about global climate change and still have your financial worry interrupted by an untimely climate induced death). Also two unrelated worries would not effect one another, if, say I worry that peanut butter is making me fat, and that rattlesnakes were plotting to usurp Ecuador. Sorry Rat, your logic is not syllogistic.

Rat is an idiot. Of course you can worry about 2 (or more) things at once.

(Misses point of strip)

xxx

This reminds me of that scene in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” where Butch and the Kid are about to escape pursuers by jumping off a cliff into a river.

“I don’t know how to swim.”

“Don’t worry about that. The fall will probably kill you.”

Coal? I would have thought Rat was pro-pain.

Henry Ford learned of a process for turning wood scraps from the production of Model T’s into charcoal briquets. So, E.G. Kingsford, a relative of Ford’s, brokered the site selection for Ford’s new charcoal manufacturing plant, so blame Ford..

I am skeptical of Rat’s Theorem, but nonetheless I’d accept an invitation to the barbecue. Live as though there were no tomorrow: you may be right!

Never mind that Solar Activity has over 100x more effect on our climate than atmospheric composition, accounts for Jupiter and Mars having identical climate trends as Earth, and explains the increasing ratio of Carbon 14 to Carbon 12 in the atmosphere (burning fossil fuels would decrease the ratio).

If Santa give you coal for Christmas for being naughty, BURN THE COAL!!!

dude

Yes, but while we’re waiting for global annihilation, I’d rather not be homeless, starving, and freezing my butt off.